


In a Time of Wolves

by homsantoft (tofsla)



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-25 03:05:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13825146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofsla/pseuds/homsantoft
Summary: When Samothes and Samot come together, Severea is the one who sets the rules.Samot makes wolves, Samothes builds walls, and Samol slowly lets his misgivings go.





	In a Time of Wolves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [imperialhare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperialhare/gifts).



> For Linda, as my half of an art/fic exchange. My prompt was something about Samothes/Samot in the time when Severea ran the show. HERE WE GO.
> 
> 80% philosophical discussions, 20% Samot thinking sexy thoughts. The internet is giving me conflicting messages on how to spell severea/severia, so i just went with one. Waves a hand.

It was a time of celebration, and one of change. Joy spread through the world, and the joy became strange creatures, and she whose will lay behind it all was incomparable in her power.

But even in joy, there is stillness.

Samot sat at the edge of the water, willow branches swaying around him. Leaves caught in his hair, snagging and pulling, the world holding him to itself—a reminder—a promise—a warning.

Oh, Samot, Samot—you who I have made to be at leisure—

"I know," Samot said. "You made me to be anything at all, instead of nothing."

In his hands, a half-formed wolf figurine seemed from one blink of the eye to the next to have turned its head slightly—to have focused its hollow eyes on Samot’s face. 

He stroked a thumb over its head. 

The wind shivered through the branches, across the water. The reeds vibrated, a whispery laughter. Samol, great dragon that he was, exhaled—and the world swayed.

How strange to exist.

"But I have an idle curiosity in me," Samot said.

Samol parted the willow branches and came to him—sat in the shape of a human beside him on bright new grass, dark and vital as the world where Samot was pale and uneasy. 

”Do you now,” he said. 

“I do. Did you make that in me too?”

“Hm.” Samol rubbed at his chin. “Guess I see why you think that. But half of that’s between you and nothing. Other half’s just me telling you to calm down.”

“Does Samothes need to calm down? Does Galenica?”

“Might be. But that’s not on me. Done’s done. They are who they are. You I got to give a good look over before I helped you settle. Lot of things you needed. Lot of them. Sense of consequences, to start with. Not sure that one stuck though.”

“I know how to regret,” Samot said. “I do. I suppose that’s because you just really wanted me to keep feeling sorry.”

“You’re trying to make it too simple, my boy.”

”No,” Samot said. “I just know you don’t like me yet.”

“Hah,” Samol said. “Sure. But I’m going to.”

It was Samothes who placed an iron crown upon Samot’s pale gold hair, while Samol watched with a cool interest—while Severea, Severea whose responsibility the crowning rightly was in this time, turned her back—while a crowd cheered, because who could help but celebrate the birth of a new divinity? Samot knelt at Samothes’ feet and bowed his head and felt the weight of the thing upon him, the weight of flesh, the weight of life—and when he looked up at Samothes with a sly quiet comment prepared, he was instead struck silent by the intensity with which Samothes studied him. A slow consideration. A profound one.

Something waited in that gaze—some future in which—

"Maybe," Samot said. "Or maybe not. Maybe only for a little while."

Samol was silent. The wind sighed again on his behalf.

"You're my son," he said at length, "and my son's—well, that's up to you to figure out."

"Or up to him," Samot suggested.

Samol shrugged. "Severea, though—that one's going to take _time._ "

Samot stroked a shaving of wood free from the little half-formed sculpture he still held. A fine curl, lifted away from the back so that the curve of it became just a little more natural. Like life.

"Not sure you're doing yourself any favours with that," Samol said, nodding to it. "But what do I know. I'm just some guy."

The wolf figurine blinked its eyes slowly at Samot, and Samot gave it a secretive smile. "It matters," he said.

 

 

 

Of all things, Samot was from the beginning prepared to understand desire. Desire led him to the world and desire steered him through it—desire turned him traitor, the desire for something, to be something. Growing, living. To indulge desire was almost from the first in his nature. 

He understood, therefore, the way in which Samothes looked at him—understood the way in which Samothes’ hands had lingered when he placed the crown—the meaning which their divine heat had carried in that moment.

That heat came to rest upon him often. 

Samothes rode in Severea's retinue and in the thundering speed of their passage there was all the same time for Samothes' gaze to land on Samot where he stood at the edge of the trees—and in that moment the base fear in Samot that Severea's wolves and her strange and beautiful creatures and all of her followers would turn on him was transformed into a warm certainty that he was guarded—by desire, of course—always by desire. 

Samot walked among the people of the land and spoke with them of the nature of things and of the world, and knew the moment, the very space between breaths, in which Samothes saw him, and considered him, and did not—despite his nature, despite his jealous protection of the act of knowing, the act of learning—intercede.

Samol saw them both, and Samot found that he looked often to his maker for—for what—approval? 

He had not thought to seek approval, in his tenuous earlier existence.

How strange, how strange—

So we are made, and so we owe some part of ourselves to another power—

Perhaps not in truth, but in a way with a great enough weight to give pause. Ah, Samot desired so much—desired, of course, approval.

Desired touch, in every moment of heat that he was gifted.

But Samothes never spoke to him, and he never spoke to Samothes.

 

 

 

"What am I to do with this existence you've given me?" Samot asked.

Samol laughed. The sea murmured agreement. "What does anyone do?"

"Create," Samot said. He released his little wolf figurine, this one of stone, onto the sandy beach that lay at his feet. It picked its way slowly across the pebbles that were to its small form like boulders.

"Rule," Samot said, and touched his hand to his crown. It became heavy on his head as soon as he thought of it, always. "Declare a creed for those who will to follow, and see that it is good."

Samol hummed thoughtfully, neither agreement nor disagreement. "Live," he said.

"Only that?"

"More than enough, I'd think."

"Oh," Samot said. 

"Don't get me wrong," Samol said. "Start a cult. Start three. Build anything you like. But it's not the point. Never was."

"What was the point?" Samot asked.

Samol was silent. The waves sighed for him.

"Nothing?" Samot asked.

"That's right." Samol looked at him—really scrutinized him. "Nothing. You want a point, you'd better make one yourself. _Create._ If you like."

Samot looked at his hands—the stone-dust on them, fine as pollen.

"I see."

 

 

 

Although Samothes had been the lord of all life before and one day would be again, at that time he was Ingenuity only, and one found him most often at work. He sat with Severea’s strange new things—he spoke with them and he considered their needs—he provided, in his paternal manner, what he felt most fitting. 

He was building houses in the shade of a great hill when Samot found him for the first time, all of Samot’s desire turned to the end of discovery—content no longer only to be desired. Samot had walked among the people and they had desired him—pleasure in idleness was for that time his purview, his to feel and inspire and share. But this—oh, _this—_

“Why is it that you watch me, my lord?” Samot asked, with pleasant slyness. “What could Ingenuity want from a thing like myself?”

Samothes paused in his work. “Samot.”

“Well?”

“Sit with me,” Samothes said. “I’ll tell you.”

His hand against Samot’s was cool, smeared with heavy clay.

Samot gave no ground—pulled where he ought to submit. No need to give ground when you were the one sought. 

Tension tightened both their arms. 

Samot smirked down at him—well?

Samothes stood—came to his feet all in a rush as he allowed Samot his point, so that Samot found that for a heartbeat he nearly held Samothes in his arms. 

Ah—

“You’re as stubborn as they said,” Samothes murmured. He didn’t sound displeased—was smiling a little, still so close. 

Samot took a step backwards, to see what Samothes would do. 

He made no move. They watched one another. 

“Not always,” Samot said. “But perhaps. At times.”

Samothes turned from Samot, and Samot found that this displeased him.

“You want very badly to know things,” Samothes said. “But you’ve never come to me before. Why?”

“You’re not a teacher.”

Samothes laughed. “True. And yet—“

He walked away from Samot—away from his work—up the hill. Samot trailed behind him, up into the light of Samothes’ sun, still new and tender—nearly as new as Samot himself.

“What is it you need, Samot?” Samothes asked, as he sat down upon the crest, the sunlight making his dark skin glow. A question he seemed to have already answered. But there was a nuance—

Want, need. 

“To know,” Samot said, and found the answer to his question in his own words. “Ah. Like that.”

“Like that,” Samothes agreed.

“You make this sound very intellectual,” Samot said. “Very clean.”

“Oh, Samot,” Samothes said. “It isn’t.”

A roughness. A depth. He turned to look at Samot, and his desire was heavy and living. It sank into every part of Samot—every part of Samot reverberated with it like a struck glass, a clear crystalline chime that refused to end—not of need—not this time—

But want.

 

 

 

At a fine party, a late hour cast shadows on the faces of the revellers—made their own shadows as spindly as creatures not yet dreamt, as spindly as the trees. Music and wine fed their spirits. A kiss—wine-red lips—

Samot was not the one kissing or kissed, but he tasted the pleasure of the pair. Let it go to his head for a little while. Loose limbs, his hair an unrestrained tumble—long, then—he had a fancy to see whether long hair would inspire Samothes to some creation to contain the stuff, or whether that was too obvious a ploy.

He shuddered in that borrowed pleasure—bent it and formed it around an image—Samothes’ hands sliding through his hair—combing it—working on it—

Ah, leave the mortal creatures to their mortal joys. He had no need to colour their dreams by warping them too far.

He let all of it slip from him—drank a little instead. Allowed himself to grow flushed and careless. Warm and wanting.

The sun set.

Around the courtyard, torches flickered into life.

Oh, if Samothes were to come to me now, Samot thought. I tire of the game that is wanting—I tire—no, not of the tease itself, the slow spinning of pleasure into a long thread between us—

But I tire of the limits of that game. 

It was Samol, though, who sat down beside him. Samol whose music was every sound in the world but who still liked to hold a guitar in his hands and threaded notes through the air. Of course the music here called to him as much as the wine had called to Samot. 

“You find me at risk of indecency,” Samot said. “I’m rather enjoying myself. Perhaps you could find another party. There are enough.”

“If you think I haven’t seen weirder shit than you drunk and mooning so hard your clothes might fall off then you really are a boy,” Samol said, and he sounded amiable, as he rarely had before—the difference between the reality of his casual fondness and the performance of it was made stark. 

“Of course,” Samot said, his voice hazy around the edges. “Perhaps I’d rather be in this state in other company.”

“That’s on you for not taking steps, then,” Samol said.

“Mm,” Samot said—stretched. Considered as he did so that new affection in Samol—found himself generous. “Never mind. I’ll dance anyway if you’ll give me the music for it.”

“You dance well, then?” Samol asked indulgently. 

“Probably,” Samot said. “I haven’t tried yet. But I do a lot of things well.”

“That’s my boy,” Samol said, and Samot, dancing through the night, held those words close—my boy, my boy—how strange to feel that one might eventually be a treasured thing—not a thing desired, but a thing acknowledged and adored—a son. My boy.

 

 

 

A wall is made perhaps of clay and sand—perhaps of stone, or wood. Shit and sticks. It was bricks that they made together, Samothes' hands guiding Samot's—see here, see here, see here. Cross-legged on warm ground.

"Wouldn't it be easier to dream them?" Samot asked.

Samothes' thumb brushed against his palm.

He shivered.

"How do you dream a thing you don't understand?"

"Easily, as a rule."

Samothes' eyes flicked from Samot's face to the place where their hands touched.

Back up.

Samot felt that he flushed. Permitted it. Parted his lips a little, making himself into an attractive picture. Oh, yes. Easily.

"To make something strong requires work," Samothes said. "Always. Yours, or someone else's. A dream is only a part of it."

"I see," Samot said. His eyes were half-lidded. He drew the back of one hand across his brow and knew that he left clay behind. 

Yes—Samothes wiped it away.

Yes—Samothes took the simplest pieces of bait, the most obvious ploys.

Samot let himself fall back and thought of towers. Bricks like so and so. Mortar. No, what would the details be—

Ah, well. Work after all. One was leisure but one was also curiosity. One was a contradiction.

The piece of clay that lay in his hands became a wolf—hopped down from his stomach and wandered away to bask in the sun.

Come lean over me, Samothes, he thought—lying on his back, the sun as warm on his face as Samothes' gaze. Kiss me and slide your hand across the flesh I have been gifted—up the front of my thigh or across my hip, lifting my skirts as you go. See where I'm naked below them. Touch your mouth to the soft skin on the inside of my knee. I'll feel the softness of your lips and the scratch of your beard and perhaps if you'll allow it the scrape of your teeth.

"Will you learn or won't you?" Samothes asked, but gently.

Samot sighed.

"I will," he said.

 

 

 

It was for Samol and for Samothes that he went before Severea when she called for him, and knelt before her throne, and it was Samothes' warmth at his back that kept his body steady, and it was the memory of Samol's act of faith in allowing him life that kept his expression resolute and calm. His robes were blue and gold as the sky. Elaborate pins held his hair tucked up against his head. The warmth of Samothes clung to them. No, he was not alone before Severea, although on every other breath he felt he might be.

“My killer,” she said—at length—such length that anxiety could despite anything begin to grow in him. “Stand.”

He stood.

She smiled at him with the dream of a wolf’s teeth—an afterimage—no lupine quality to her face except for that which was superimposed by the viewer. Rather an aquatic quality, a deep-sea thing with sharp angles and strange curves.

A wolf bleeding, her image told Samot, all the same. Its pelt stolen. The thief, unrepentant—

“What are you making out of the world?” she asked him. 

“Books, my Lady,” he said.

“And wolves,” she said. She stretched out her hand towards him and one of the small stone-wolves scurried along it from her shoulder to her wrist—made the leap across the space between them to tumble into Samot’s surprised hands.

It shook itself vigorously.

“I did notice,” she said. “What do you mean by it? Are you claiming my finest creature as well as my life?”

A danger in the cutting angle of her words.

“You seem to be alive,” he said.

“Thanks to wolves.”

Samot raised his chin—looked up at her with defiance in his mouth and sincerity in his eyes. 

“Then we have something in common after all,” he said.

Somewhere behind him, Samol chuckled—Severea’s eyes flicked to him. Behind her, Galenica shifted their weight. 

“No,” Severea said to them. “He’s really not wrong. He can keep his wolves. They’re shadows anyway.”

Galenica’s grumble was the slow threat of a rockslide. 

Severea smiled. 

“I don’t care for you,” she said. “I know what you are. And I’ll be here to pick up the pieces of whatever mess you leave behind you.”

“I’m nothing but a god,” Samot said. Spread his empty hands, palms up, for her to see.

“Perhaps.” 

She gestured dismissal. 

"No sentence to be passed down on me for my crimes?" Samot asked.

"To make mistakes is a punishment in itself, and to care about them as you seem to? Well."

"I see."

Samot bowed deeply, and when he straightened she had swept away, Galenica at her side.

 

 

 

That was the night Samothes came to him.

"I'm sanctioned now, I suppose," Samot said. "In a way. Have you decided to enjoy a little leisure in my honour?"

"You were always going to be accepted," Samothes said.

"That isn't an answer."

Samothes watched him with that heavy intent of his.

"Perhaps I have," he said.

"Come, then," Samot said. "I have a little wine."

"Do you."

Samot laughed—resonant, crystal clear, a struck glass.

If they drank it was only a little—a bottle of wine toppled to drown papers in red, unheeded—Samot kneeling above Samothes, hands in his hair—whining with a need, a need—more, please, give it to me—Samothes' lips against his neck. Samothes' hands on his thighs. On his hips. 

Lifting his skirts and seeing that he was naked beneath them.

Touching him, there, between his legs, until he was nothing but existence, pure and brilliant—shaking with the force of his own life.


End file.
